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Friday, June 5, 2015

Hop Hunter IPA (review)

Forgive me beer lovers. It has been 5 months since my last beer review. But let me make it up to you by taking a taste of Sierra Nevada's Hop Hunter IPA, a brew which claims to be "the first beer to feature oil from wet hops steam distilled directly in the field, minutes after harvest." Sierra Nevada uses "this pure, powerful hop essence in concert with whole-cone hops" in their "brew kettle and "in their" Hop torpedo to create the ultimate IPA experience." Also (barely) worth noting, in January there was a bizarre trademark battle involving Hop Hunter IPA which you can read abouthere.

I'm not entirely sure what the effects of this "hop distilling" process are. A neat experiment would have been a brew utilizing only "distilled hops," but given the presence of regular hop cones its difficult to differentiate between one and the other, if indeed there is any discernible difference. The hops do taste fresh, however, reminding me of a slightly less "bright" version of Sierra Nevada's Celebration IPA which I reviewed in December. With Celebration IPA, that we were dealing with fresh picked wet hops, was glaringly obvious. With Hop Hunter it is slightly less so.

In cliched beer review speak - look for pine and citrus notes in Hop Hunter IPA with a pronounced sweetness on the tip of the tongue. Hop Hunter weighs in at 6.2%AVB, and is a golden yellow with medium carbonation. While American lager drinkers will certainly think it strong, i'd call it an "easy drinking" middle of the road IPA. Full of flavor buy not overwhelmingly complex or intense.